To begin writing dao 道, first you draw two points [‵′],
whose shape, when you hold it away, looks similar to “man”
upside‑down 人. One is on the left, the other is on the right:
they signify yin and yang, masculine and feminine, one yin
one yang, that is Dao.
[Since it is upside‑down], the earth is above the man’s
head, while the sky is under his feet, it is precisely the Tai
hexagram 泰. The upside‑down human shape represents the
backward walk [daoxing nishi 倒行逆施]. We who practice Dao‑
ist asceticism also know that “going against the tide is a fact of
the immortal’s life, following the current is the fact of an ordi‑
nary man’s life.”

Heaven placed beneath Earth signifies concord, the union of Earth and Heaven: “It is prosperity – the small departs and the great arrives.” Further on, the commentary mentions that Tai (11th hexagram)represents the spontaneous (ziran 自然), the perfect harmony (heshun 和顺) of society when yin and yang are well
positioned.

The next, 12th hexagram is its opposite: Heaven above and Earth below:
“The big one goes and the small one arrives; this is stagnation,” the moment
when opposites do not communicate. The commentary explains that when yin and yang come apart, Heaven and Earth obstruct each other.

The One. “In the character dao, under the two points forming an
upside‑down man, there is the horizontal line of the “One” (yi 一) . . .
The One is the beginning of numbers and represents a state of equilib‑
rium, that practiced by the ascetic, who must have a well‑balanced tem‑
perament [pingheng tai 平衡态] and achieve the equilibrium of no desire
[wuyu 无欲].”

The Self. “Under the two points and the horizontal line, there is the
character zi 自, the self. It is the zi of ziji 自己, oneself; this is also the ba‑
sis of the word ziran 自然, the very nature of things.

In Daoism, working on the self should not mean being preoccupied
with the self, but rather forgetting the self (wangwo 忘我).14 But
how does one work on oneself surrounded by other people, wrestling
with the rules and constraints of the community?

Temperament is supposed to be as yin as possible.
The fact remains that even in a noisy environment, and regardless
of whether there is an atmosphere of harmony or disagreement, ascetics
have to be able to find inner peace and practice “self‑perfecting through
refinement” (xiulian 修炼), since this is the essential meaning behind
these lines. The backward walk is nothing but a return (fan 反) toward

the state Before Heaven and the spontaneous nature of things. Returning
to the origins means retracing one’s steps, reintegrating the Ten Thou‑
sand Things into the Three, the Three into the Two, the Two into the One.
Rediscovering this essential unity gives one hope of attaining Dao.

On the most cosmological level, it is a question of returning to what
preceded the separation of the breaths and the creation of the universe. If
this is transposed to the level of one’s own body, the microcosm of the
universe, then it is a question of asceticism: one must return from aged‑
ness to youth, rediscover a previously known state, somewhat like a fe‑
tus before birth.